


spartan foxes

by ShannonXL



Series: Shit My Sherlock Does [10]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fem!Sherlock, Female Sherlock Holmes, Lesbian Irene, Minor Violence, Platonic Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Same-Sex Marriage, girl!sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 23:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonXL/pseuds/ShannonXL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knows that Sherlock and Irene are married.</p>
<p>But he doesn't understand how. Sherlock is strange and inconvenient and has no concept of fidelity. Irene is a criminal and a transient and a terror in a tight dress. Neither one wants a family, or a home. What use do a criminal and a consulting detective have for matrimony?</p>
<p>(But more than all that, Sherlock is a machine, or at least, sometimes, it seems like she wants to be. And machines aren't capable of love. After all, love hurts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	spartan foxes

Irene, as always, is unexpected.

John smells her perfume in the hallway; he assumes that's intentional. It's kind of considerate, actually. Now, he has time to prepare. For the storm, and for the eventual fallout. It's the secret super spy equivalent of a sock on the door. He doesn't have to walk in on something... untoward, if he doesn't want to. 

(That's the word Irene chose to use, 'untoward', as if seeing the two of them tangled up on the couch together doing ungodly things with Sherlock's handcuffs was like a badly timed joke).

He knocks, which is silly, he knocks on his own front door, and Sherlock shouts "Enter!", which is no indication of anyone's dignity. It's not until he hears Irene's calm drawl, "Hello John", that he twists his key in the lock and walks in. They're seated across from each other, fully clothed, and the furniture might as well be charred for all the heat that's between them. 

He starts putting groceries away, and considers battening down the hatches.

* * *

Irene takes him out to lunch.

She asks him mundane questions about his job, and she's better at pretending she's interested than any date he's had recently (he's had several, despite Sherlock's unfortunately unintentional efforts to ruin all of them). Despite himself, he enjoys it.

"You're a good friend, John." She rises at the end of the meal, having paid for it while John wasn't looking. 

"I do my best."

She reaches across the table to shake his hand.

"She doesn't say it, I'm sure. Not the way most people do. I know it's not easy."

He smiles.

"Honeymoon period over?"

She laughs, her throat stretching as her head falls back.

"Oh no! It ended before we even met." And he doesn't begin to understand that. "No, her eccentricities never bothered me. But it makes her harder to love, for other people. And I leave her lonely for far too long."

His fingers tense, and she pretends not to notice.

"What exactly are you telling me?"

"Just have a care." She looks him dead in the eye. "And never doubt, for a second, that she loves you."

He nods.

"She's not very good at it."

She doesn't disagree. She waits him out.

"But she's learning how," he concedes. "And I've got time."

Irene smiles.

"I'll remind her to try harder when I'm around."

It's a long visit. And every day, there's milk in the fridge, and fewer experiments with dead rats, and it may be that Sherlock is trying. 

* * *

He does walk in on them.

There's a quiet song playing. It sounds like Edith Piaff, like the kinds of songs his grandmother used to play. 

Sherlock is in Irene's arms, and Irene is in Sherlock's and they're swaying with their eyes closed, enchanting the cramped living room into a ballroom or a place courtyard. It is more intimate than anything he's ever seen, and he stops wondering in that moment how a marriage between these two people can work. He forgets what he knows of love, forgets the traditions and the ceremonies, the white dresses and the monogamous commitments, the his and hers hand towels, the 2.5 children. He learns that it means honesty. Bare and secure. 

And when Sherlock calls herself a coward in the face of this gift, John will understand what she means.

It will be months from this moment. They will be somewhere cold, and dark, and Sherlock will be tied to a chair and bleeding, and John will be with her, and they will joke, unreasonably, about what he should say to her loved ones when he makes it out alive. 

(He won't tell her to take care of April. She already knows).

She will hang her head and laugh when he mentions Mycroft. She is serious for a second, because she believes that Cerise is in good hands. 

And then she will sigh, and fiddle with the ring around her finger (a silver ankh, she's never explained why). And she will say that there have been many, but there was really only ever one woman. The only one to outwit her. The only one to take her down. The only one to care the way she wished to be cared for. "She makes me laugh." Sherlock's cheeks will be rough and red from the beating she took, the one she antagonized their captors for, so John would be left in peace. "She makes me laugh, and I'm ashamed at how I've failed her. She terrifies me, John. I love her, and I'm a goddamned coward." She swallows, bile or spittle or blood or tears, John isn't the detective, so he will never know. "Tell her 'green', she knows what it means."

John will not be caught staring at them, standing in the doorway of his bedroom with his underwear hanging loose around his hipbones. He wants a glass of water, but not badly enough to break the spell they've woven around themselves. He will not be caught, but he watches them for a few seconds longer than he has to. 

She's trying. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> More at shitmysherlockdoes.tumblr.com


End file.
